Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Today's News: Patience

All in all, today I am seeing less panic and more patience as international affairs experts are able to develop a longer-term analysis of what Putin's War will mean for the world and how we might get through this.  People are, I think, starting to see what an end game could look like. 
Some of these long-form analysis articles are downthread. First of all tonight I wanted to start with this observation: 
One of the interesting things I am finding about this war is that there is always "some guy" doing tweets or posting blogs who really knows what he is talking about. 
These aren't usually professional journalists, just somebody with some expertise or experience, sharing the wealth with everyone. 
Like, for example, this guy Trent Telenko -- he knows a lot about how an army is supposed to maintain its equipment, and says the Russian army isn't doing it. 
Here's the end of his 17-tweet thread: And then there are people like Markos and Mark Sumner and Hunter at Daily Kos, who in one sense are just people with a blog, like me, but they have a profound knowledge of tactics, diplomacy, political science and international relations. Their posts point me to tweets like this one: Here's some good news: This is an incredible story about how the last two international journalists in Mariupol, from Associated Press, escaped the city. 
... We reached an entryway, and armored cars whisked us to a darkened basement. 
Only then did we learn from a policeman why the Ukrainians had risked the lives of soldiers to extract us from the hospital. 
 “If they catch you, they will get you on camera and they will make you say that everything you filmed is a lie,” he said. “All your efforts and everything you have done in Mariupol will be in vain.”  
The officer, who had once begged us to show the world his dying city, now pleaded with us to go. He nudged us toward the thousands of battered cars preparing to leave Mariupol. 
It was March 15. We had no idea if we would make it out alive. . . . 
With this war, it's sometimes hard to sort out what is an accurate critique of how badly the Russian military is performing, and what could be just wishful thinking that the Russians will somehow defeat themselves. 
But as the days and weeks go by, it seems that Ukraine is actually defeating the Russia invasion:
It was announced today that more than 10,000 Russian soldiers have died -- and western observers seemed to agree that this is an undercount, that likely at least twice that number have died, and more tens of thousands injured. 
I read a gruesome story today that Ukrainians are now digging up their trenches of Russian bodies in shallow graves and trading them to Russian units in exchange for their Ukrainian prisoners. 
Confirming what was discussed yesterday at Daily Kos, here is an excellent article in The Atlantic - Eliot A. Cohen Why Can’t the West Admit That Ukraine Is Winning? 
...pictures of shattered hospitals, dead children, and blasted apartment blocks accurately convey the terror and brutality of this war, but they do not convey its military realities. To put it most starkly: If the Russians level a town and slaughter its civilians, they are unlikely to have killed off its defenders, who will do extraordinary and effective things from the rubble to avenge themselves on the invaders. 
A very perceptive article today by David Rothkopf: U.S., Ukraine, NATO Have a Secret Weapon Against Russia: Patience. 
 How long is a night when you are huddled beneath a blanket on a subway station floor, holding your baby in your arms as missiles and bombs reduce the city over your head to rubble? . . . 
Time means something different in a war zone. 
It is more precious, more tortuous, more valuable, and more treacherous. 
When I spoke recently to a senior U.S. State Department official about the war in Ukraine, time was at the center of every point he made. It was the secret weapon of the Ukrainians and the greatest challenge they and their allies faced. 
Over time sanctions against the Russians would cause increasing pain. 
Over time mounting losses in Ukraine would generate ever greater opposition to Putin within his own country. . . . 
...we have to find a way to have patience. And he acknowledged the Russians knew that and that is why they were so determined to escalate attacks, to destroy cities, to inflict more pain on civilians. Because they knew that only if they did that they might force Ukraine to the negotiating table on favorable terms. . . . 
U.S. officials speculate that the threats of escalation are a strategy by Putin to force a settlement while he still has some leverage and can escape this conflict with something that he can tell his people was a “win” and worth the sacrifice. A protracted war is, at this point, at least in the view of the senior state department official with whom I spoke, not to Putin’s advantage. 
That is why he emphasized the importance of letting the strategy of supporting Ukraine’s fierce resistance while waging something like intense economic warfare against Russia, be given time to work. 
Here is another interesting analysis here, by a German foreign policy analyst: Delightful: And back to Canadian politics for this:
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